U. Of I. Focuses On Meningitis

February 13, 1991|By Dan Culloton, Chicago Tribune.

CHAMPAIGN — The deaths of two 19-year-old students from a meningitis-related infection led many University of Illinois students to put more mundane concerns on the back burner Tuesday while they pondered their mortality.

By noon, the university`s McKinley Health Center had distributed the antibiotic Rifampin to 3,700 students in an effort that ``went way beyond what public health standards are (for distributing medication in such cases),``

said Rod Kingston, assistant director of the health center.

However, school officials said they would wait about two weeks before they would declare the outbreak over.

``We can`t say that it`s over yet. We still have an incubation period of at least another 8 to 10 days before we can start to get reasonably comfortable,`` Kingston said.

Two sophomores died between Saturday and Monday as the result of meningococcemia, a blood infection caused by the same bacteria that causes meningitis.

Brian McDonnell of Darien died early Monday at Carle Foundation Hospital in Urbana. Gregory A. Mank of Belleville, Ill., died Saturday at the same hospital.

Two other university students were admitted Monday night to local hospitals with flu-like symptoms such as those found with meningococcemia. But tests showed that the man and the woman, both 20, were not suffering from meningococcemia, officials at the hospital and the school said.

The man was admitted to Covenant Medical Center, Urbana, and the woman was in good condition and being held for observation at Carle Hospital.

Students who did not qualify to receive free medication from the McKinley Health Center because they had not been in direct contact with McDonnell or Mank, and those who did not want to wait in the long lines winding out of the health center, sought the drug elsewhere.

A spokeswoman at Carle said the hospital had written 263 Rifampin prescriptions Monday night for people complaining of flu-like symptoms. Almost 200 of those people were university students, said Gretchen Robbins, a hospital spokeswoman.

Other students, at the urging of their parents, got their family doctors to prescribe the drug for them. Hook`s Drugstore in Champaign, which normally handles about 10 prescriptions a day, processed more than 100 Tuesday, employees at the store said.

The mysterious nature of the disease confused and frightened many students on campus.

``I`m just afraid that, if I ever got it or had it, that I would never know it,`` said Mark Trone, 20, a sophomore from Edwardsville. Trone said that after he learned of the two deaths he bought a thermometer to monitor his temperature.

``As soon as it goes up, I`m going in (to the health center),`` he said.

The outbreak scared off two of 22 companies scheduled to take part in a campus job fair at which students are offered summer employment. The fair was held Tuesday in the university`s Illini Union.

Both Arthur Andersen Consulting and the Saginaw Division of General Motors chose not to make the trip to Champaign after they learned of the outbreak, said Don Hunt, assistant dean of engineering and one of the organizers of the job fair.

Duane Setterdahl, a 20-year-old engineering student who shared at least one class with Mank, said he thought someone was playing a joke on him when he received a phone call at 7 a.m. Monday telling him to go to the health center to receive medication.

``I quickly realized that it was not a prank,`` said Setterdahl, who found more than 50 other people waiting in line.

``After all, to most young people of this age, death is something remote and distant, and here we have had two individuals die who were close to them, at least chronologically, even if they did not know them,`` Levy said.

``Coupled with the mystery of a strange and virulent disease that has this impact, obviously it`s got a lot of people unsettled.``

The university established an information hot line (217-333-0050) Monday that by midnight had taken nearly 1,100 telephone calls from students and parents, said William Riley, dean of students.

Still, some people on campus thought the outbreak was nothing to worry about. ``Some of the students are more paranoid than anything,`` said Vicky Greear, a 32-year-old university clerical worker.

``When you get to be 32, you get to see a lot of epidemics come and go. When they have an outbreak of the mumps, then I`ll be scared, because I never had the mumps.``

Some students talked of canceling parties and skipping classes, but most said they were trying to carry on with their lives.

Kurt Volkman, 19, who lived three doors from McDonnell in Hopkins Hall dormitory, said: ``I`m sure he would have wanted us to continue working hard, because he always worked hard in his classes.``